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Re: Do you believe in ghosts/paranormal?

Re: Do you believe in ghosts/paranormal?

I enjoy the Ghost Adventures show on Travel Channel those guys crack me up. couple weeks ago there was an investigation where a guy was able to communicate to his 17 year old daughter on her birthday a year after she passed. They got alot of convincing EVP's that were quite intelligent. That was a situation where I really couldn't find a reason as to why that would be faked. You always see these shows with stories about ghosts that are 100 years old. But this was a recently deceased family member. It was really quite amazing given the implications of what that really means if it were indeed a real EVP from the man's daughter.

Re: Do you believe in ghosts/paranormal?

I had very vivid experience as a child that led me, someone very reasonable and educated in logic, to believe in, if not ghosts, then something ghost-like. I'm certainly open to the possibility that it may have been some sort of a hallucination, but I have no reason to believe it was, and those who insist that it had to be are begging the question* (a textbook logical fallacy), and get chastised for it by me -- deservedly so.

With that said, I can understand how people who haven't had an enlightening experience like I had would be skeptical. It's very possible I would be, too, in their inexperienced situation.

Rational Person: I believe in ghosts because I experienced one.
Pseudo-skeptic: No, you didn't, because ghosts don't exist.
Rational Person: How do you know?
Pseudo-skeptic: Because there's no evidence for ghosts.
Rational Person: But my personal experience, while not repeatable, was empirical evidence, thus, I have personal evidence that ghosts exist.
Pseudo-skeptic: No, you don't, because ghosts don't exist. Your personal experience was a hallucination.
Rational Person: How do you know?
Pseudo-skeptic: Because there's no evidence for ghosts.
Rational Person: But my personal experience, while not repeatable, was empirical evidence, thus, I have personal evidence that ghosts exist.
Pseudo-skeptic: No, you don't, because ghosts don't exist. Your personal experience was a hallucination.

Re: Do you believe in ghosts/paranormal?

Yes I believe in ghosts.

My cousins from out east lived in the former house of General Custard. When they were moving out of the house, one of the kids, who at the time was about 3 or 4 years old was crying one morning. When her parents asked why she was so upset, she said it was because General Custard wouldn't be reading her bedtime stories anymore. Keep in mind she was 3 or 4 years old, and not once was it mentioned that it was the former house of General Custard.

Re: Do you believe in ghosts/paranormal?

As for aliens, I've not seen any actual evidence, only poorly-thought-out arguments ("the universe is so gosh-darn big that aliens must exist!").

How is this a poor thought out argument? We live on a planet. There are 9 planets in our little solar system. Surely we aren't the only planet in the entire universe that has life on it. Surely the vast and numerous Billions of stars serve more purpose than just to provide a backdrop to our night sky.

Re: Do you believe in ghosts/paranormal?

How is this a poor thought out argument? We live on a planet. There are 9 planets in our little solar system. Surely we aren't the only planet in the entire universe that has life on it. Surely the vast and numerous Billions of stars serve more purpose than just to provide a backdrop to our night sky.

It's a poorly-thought-out argument because it only looks at one side of the coin, the size of the universe, and ignores the flipside, the many known factors required for life to form/exist in the first place.

The analogy I've always used is Uncle Cletus buying 20,000 Powerball tickets, each with an individual number combination. In his mind, he's about to hit the jackpot. After all, with so many number combinations, it's (in his mind) an absolute certainty that one will be the big winner. Of course, even though 20,000 combinations is quite a lot, it's a very small number when compared to the 175M or so possible combinations, thus, it remains a long shot that Cletus will win the jackpot.

So take the low end of the number of stars estimate, 10^22. Let's guess that 0.01% of stars have one planet capable of supporting life. Then you get 10^18 planets capable of supporting life. Say that 0.01% of planets capable of supporting life result in intelligent life. Then you get 10^14 planets with intelligent life. Say that 0.01% of planets with intelligent life develop space travel within their solar system. Then you get 10^10 planets with space travelers on it like us (ten billion). Say that 0.01% of planets with space travelers on it like us got to that point a billiion or more years ago. Then you have a million planets of space travelers who have developed technology equivalent to ours over a billion of our years ago.

The distances involved make it unlikely that we have alien visitors, unless those intelligent life forms evolving somewhere billions of years ago discovered some wormholes into our neighborhood of the milky way, and even then we are a needle in the haystack in a field of haystacks- why would they make any special effort to find our little relatively uninteresting region of the Milky Way, one galaxy among billions of galaxies?

So while it seems reasonable that intelligence is out there, I don't think it is particularly reasonable to presume that we have (or have had) regular visitation from such intelligence.

Last edited by Slick Pinkham; 02-25-2013 at 10:38 AM.

The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!).
I'm (maybe) back after being repetedly banned, merely for supporting a different NFL team than do certain forum moderators.

Re: Do you believe in ghosts/paranormal?

My cousins from out east lived in the former house of General Custard. When they were moving out of the house, one of the kids, who at the time was about 3 or 4 years old was crying one morning. When her parents asked why she was so upset, she said it was because General Custard wouldn't be reading her bedtime stories anymore. Keep in mind she was 3 or 4 years old, and not once was it mentioned that it was the former house of General Custard.

The distances involved make it unlikely that we have alien visitors, unless intelligent life somewhere billions of years ago and they have discovered some wormholes into our neighborhood of the milky way

Or they are smarter than us and know things we have no idea about when it comes to traveling or viewing remote distances....

Nuntius was right for a while. I was wrong for a while. But ultimately I was right and Frank Vogel has been let go.

------

"A player who makes a team great is more valuable than a great player. Losing yourself in the group, for the good of the group, thatís teamwork."

Re: Do you believe in ghosts/paranormal?

It's a poorly-thought-out argument because it only looks at one side of the coin, the size of the universe, and ignores the flipside, the many known factors required for life to form/exist in the first place.

There only needs to be one side of the coin. The concept that our universe could be infinite and that there could be an infinite number of universes is within the realms of possible. So it's just a matter of probability.

Michio (Michael) Kaku is a well renowned theoretical physicist, you can youtube some of his videos were he talks about it. Neil Tyson, another theoretical physicist, has some videos as well. Kaku is really interesting to listen too. He's very articulate and explains concepts in a way that is easily understood. I tend to get a little lost when I watch them, not because I don't keep up, but because 4hrs go by and I haven't done anything else.

Re: Do you believe in ghosts/paranormal?

There only needs to be one side of the coin. The concept that our universe could be infinite and that there could be an infinite number of universes is within the realms of possible. So it's just a matter of probability.

Sure, if the universe is infinite, and life forming from non-life is a natural occurrence, then we should not only expect other life to exist, but an infinite number of other lifeforms to exist (which leads to some very bizarre logical conclusions, and the destruction of Ockham's Razor, but I digress).

I get that.

The problem is, the universe being infinite isn't a demonstrable fact, but a hypothesis. You're using an uncertainty (the size of the universe) to address an uncertainty (whether or not life exist beyond Earth).

What's funny is that I was going to bring up the notion of a multiverse, but use it to support my position. the fact that an otherwise respectable scientists, like Eugene Koonin, would be forced to plead to a multiverse to explain Earth's life, let alone any non-Earth-based life, stresses just how dire the situation is.